1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a riveting apparatus and more particularly to an apparatus arranged to feed tubular rivets, automatically, to a workpiece riveting station.
By the term "tubular rivet" is meant herein a rivet having a tubular portion open at both ends and having a flange at one end of the portion, but no mandrel.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a known riveting apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,495,754 a rotary carrier carries a plurality of rivet engaging pins. The pins are radially displaceable, being biased outwards pneumatically. The carrier rotates and the rivet engaging pins engage with respective tubular rivets at a raceway and convey them one at a time to an angular position of the carrier at which a rivet deforming means is used to deform the rivets. During a rivet deforming operation the rivet deforming means applies force directly onto a rivet engaging pin to cause it to withdraw from a rivet. Thus the pin must be sufficiently strong to withstand the force, and accordingly the apparatus is applicable only to tubular revets having a tubular portion of sufficient size to accommodate a rivet engaging pin big enough to withstand the force.